Welcome to the Poor Haunted Mansion

If you go to Disneyland this spring or summer, you'll find great deals on Park Hopper tickets. The question is whether there will be anyone there to sell you your tickets, take your tickets and grope you. Disney is eliminating 1,900 jobs at its domestic theme parks, most in Orlando (1,400), the least in Burbank (200) and the rest at the Anaheim resort (300).

It's going to be weird to go to Bats' Day in the Fun Park this year (aka Goth Day at Disneyland) and see fewer staff cast members scraping gum off the streets, fewer characters in costume. But I'd rather see some litter and lose out on Captain Hook and the Evil Queen than have them cut down on the safety staff running the rides. I got stuck once on the Roger Rabbit ride and had to walk out with a flashlight carrying escort cast member. It was really freaky.

Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before "graduating" to OC Weekly in 1995 as the paper's first calendar editor. He has contributed as a freelance editor and writer to several publications and been the subject of or featured in several reports online, in print and on the radio and television. One of countless times he returned to his Costa Mesa, CA, home with a bounty of awards from a journalism competition, his wife told him to take out the trash.